Darzi (2008), with a critical look at Ghomeshi’s (2001) arguments for the vP analysis of Persian subject control constructions, suggests that these constructions involve an embedded CP projection headed by the complementizer ke ‘that’. This can be represented as in (1).
After a short summary of Cinque’s (1999, 2004) hierarchy of adverbial specifiers and clausal functional heads, which is the diagnostic tool here, the present squib takes up the following three objectives:
Following Wurmbrand (1998) and Landau (1999), Ghomeshi (2001) builds up some arguments to show that the embedded clause in Persian control constructions lacks CP and TP projections and that the syntactic category of the complement in these constructions is vP. This section reviews Ghomeshi’s (2001) lack-of-tense-clash argument and Darzi’s (2008) counterevidence for that.1
Ghomeshi (2001:25–26) observes that unlike in noncontrol constructions (as in (2a)), conflicting temporal modifiers are...